James W. Drisko MSW '77, a professor at the School for Social Work, was named an inaugural Fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), social work's main research organization, which holds the major social work research conference annually. The SSWR Board recently instituted a Fellow status for members who have presented numerous juried conference papers over the years and who have provided considerable service to the society. Drisko has presented 16 times at SSWR since 1999, on topics ranging from qualitative research methods, attachment disorders, empowerment, and a systematic review of the evidence base for psychodynamic psychotherapy. For several years, he has led an interest group on qualitative research, been a reader for SSWR awards, and for conference abstracts. The society anticipates that Fellows will serve as role models and mentors for individuals pursuing careers in social work research, among other roles.

Dominique Thiébaut, professor of computer science, recently received an award for Best Paper by the International Academy, Research and Industry Association, presented at the Third International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in December. Thiébaut received the conference award for his paper, “2D-Packing Images on a Large Scale.”

Carol T. Christ, 10th president of Smith College, recently received the 2013 Francis Andrew March Award, given by the Executive Committee of the Association of Departments of English (ADE) to honor exceptional service to the profession of English. The award, established in 1984, was named for Francis March (1823-1911), professor of English at Lafayette College and the first professor of English in America. Christ, who received her doctorate in English from Yale University, chaired the English department at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was also dean of humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences and provost of the College of Arts and Sciences, before coming to Smith in 2002. The award was presented at the MLA Annual Convention awards ceremony in Chicago on January 11.

Bosiljka Glumac, professor of geosciences, received the Accomplished Alumni Award from the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at her alma mater, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in November. Glumac began her study at the University of Tennessee in 1991, traveling from her home country of Yugoslavia (now Croatia), and completed her doctorate in 1997.

December 2, 2013

Nancy Roseman and Richard Olivo

Nancy Roseman ’80, who was appointed the 28th president of Dickinson College in July, became the first woman to lead the Carlisle, Penn., liberal arts school in its 230-year-old history. In her inaugural address, Roseman shared how important the residential liberal-arts experience has been in her life—from her years at Smith to her 21-year career at Williams College as a professor biology and dean of the college. She also expressed special thanks to her Smith biology professor and adviser, Richard Olivo.

Piper Foreso, events coordinator in college relations, and a local artist, took the People’s Choice Award in this year’s Art in the Orchard, an annual Easthampton, Mass., festival featuring a sculpture trail. Foreso won the award for her work “DragonFlies,” a 14-foot, 75-pound sculpture of a Chinese dragon, made from recycled tin cans and glass. Foreso, of Northampton, works out of a studio in the Cottage Street Studios building in Easthampton. Since the 1980s, she has worked with glass, metal and found mechanical objects since the 1980s in creating her sculptures. View her work online.

Five students—Abby Ericson ’15, Christine Hamilton ’17, Charlotte Sappo ’15, Alex Widstrand ’17, and Lingyi Wu ’14—attended the Drone and Aerial Robotics Conference (DARC), held in October in New York City. The three-day multidisciplinary conference hosts top experts from industry, government and academia on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, with an emphasis on civilian applications, in agriculture, policing, weather, mapping, wildlife conservation and other areas. The five students work with Paul Voss, associate professor of engineering and an expert on UAVs, in studying drone technology and its applications. At the DARC, the Smith students participated in a competition in which they programmed a small drone and demonstrated it for conference attendees.

Five students—Julia Edwards ’15, Gavi Haskell ’15, Jessica Mann ’15, Erika Miguel ’15 and Sharon Pamela Santana ’14—represented the largest Smith contingent ever to attend the Grace Hopper Conference, an annual celebration of women in computing, held this year in early October in Minneapolis, Minn. The conference featured speakers including Megan Smith, from Google, and Sheryl Sandberg, from Facebook. The Smith students’ attendance was made possible in part from a scholarship from Google. The Grace Hopper Conference began in 1994 and was inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, a computer science pioneer. It is the largest technical conference for women in computing.

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